


First Kisses: Ben and Alec

by Heather



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Angst, Comment Fic, Dark, Gen, Minor Character Death, Sibling Incest, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-17
Updated: 2007-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather





	First Kisses: Ben and Alec

494 never really understood the isolation some of his unit's comrades occasionally spoke of when they were young. From the earliest memory he has, it's seemed to him that he was never alone.

This was not due to any particular bonding he shared with his unit, but a single, unique awareness lurking in the back of his mind that somewhere out there, there was another like him, someone out there who shared that same awareness.

He's practically a grown man before he gets an explanation.

"Ben was 493...you must've been twinned."

He knew it before she told him. Not long after what his superiors were referring to as his "Berrisford failure," they took him down to the labs to show him what exactly happened to failures at Manticore.

There's very little in the world that can prepare a person for seeing their own face on a bloody corpse--fresh stitches in the chest from where the autopsy had been conducted--lying on a cold, metal gourney.

They locked him in with the body for nearly a day, wanting to make absolutely certain their message sunk in.

At first, it was terrifying while 494 stared at that face and felt his own mortality creeping inside him like bile in his throat, but he'd been trained to adapt himself to anything, everything, and began to school his mind to see not himself, but the body of a comrade. Or, he supposed, a brother.

He wondered how 493 had met his end, what failure had led them to do this to him. 494 became viscerally uncomfortable and almost sad as an image, unbidden, crawled into his mind of a child entertaining himself with drawing pictures in his own breath on a window pane, staring across the compound at another window where he could see other X5s watching someone entertain them with shadows.

He knew, without knowing how, that the corpse on the table had been the shadow-boy. He remembered being the one that drew in air and light.

494 drew close to the table and looked on the body for another minute, then took cold comfort from it in the form of a kiss against unresponsive lips.

Later, they came for him and let him out.

"Do you understand what happens to failures, 494?" They had asked.

"Yes, sir." He'd replied.

Failure at Manticore meant cost.

493 had paid with his life. 494 had paid with a connection he'd never understood but taken comfort from just the same.

Because they failed, 493 was dead and 494 was at last truly alone.


End file.
